Technical Field
The present invention relates to an image forming system and a print log management method which can output the print log including the image.
Description of the Related Art
In recent years, like a nomad worker or the like, working styles or life styles have been diversified. In such a situation, the styles of the offices have been also diversified. In addition to the style in which persons work in the predetermined office, the style in which each person works in a friendly working environment or place by using a rental office, a shared office, co-working space and the like, is popularized.
In not an office of the company, but a rental office or a shared office in which the persons belonging to various companies work by temporarily renting the working space in the same place, various equipments, such as an image forming apparatus and the like, are provided. A user of the rental office or the like, can use these equipments by paying the charge fee. In general, an administrator of the rental office charges each user the charge fee a month or the like, for the use of the equipment by referring to the print history information (log data) stored in the equipment.
On the other hand, in an image forming apparatus, in order to save the print history in detail, the image log including the image of the printed document is stored. However, there are some cases in which the confidential information is included in the image included in the image log. When an administrator of the rental office views this image log in order to calculate the charge fee which is charged to each user, there is some possibility that the confidential information is leaked from the image log.
In Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2014-013474, the following image forming apparatus is disclosed. In the image forming apparatus, the portion to be concealed in the image log is specified in accordance with the set concealment condition and the image log is stored after the specified portion is encoded. In case that the administrator having the viewing right for viewing the concealed portion views the image log, the encoded concealed portion is decoded and the decoded portion is displayed in the original state. On the other hand, in case that the administrator who does not have the viewing right for viewing the concealed portion views the image log, the encoded concealed portion is displayed by masking the concealed portion.
In the technology disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2014-013474, it is troublesome to set the concealed portion individually. Further, because the person having the viewing right is only an administrator, it is sufficient to use a specific secret key which can be used only by the administrator. However, in order to handle the above-described request, that is, the request in which a user who prints the document can view the log including the concealed portion, but an administrator can view only the portion of the log except the concealed portion, it is necessary to set the encoding process for each user in order to encode the portion to be concealed in the log data so that only the user can decode the encoded portion. It is difficult to manage the encoding and decoding of the log.